To life experiences!

In January 2004, Jaime and I bought the Pantera. For the next 8 years, we worked on it, drove it, worked on it some more, drove it, and worked on it some more. I have a lot of good memories earned through that car. Seems like the tougher the challenge, the better the memories.

Worse job? Probably Dad and I changing the coolant lines under the car. That was horrible. It was wet, smelly, rusty and frustrating, all while working in an extremely confined space. I couldn’t have done it without him.

Most scary? Jaime and I recovering the dash. Days worth of measuring, cutting, stitching and you get one shot at gluing that cover on. The cost of the material alone made the whole thing scary.

Stuff I feel bad about? The Pantera stranding Dad at the end of Highway 55. Nine years later it would leave me and a professional photographer stranded in LA on highway 5. He had to push the car off the freeway three times.

Rewarding? Running four 48 IDA Weber carbs, making nearly 600hp, and having the car run great and stay tuned after everyone who hadn’t ever run Webers told me it couldn’t be done.

Last year we “finished” it. The car is beautiful, reliable, rides nice, has A/C and is so loud that the neighbors complained to the housing association. That’s a success in my book. The car received a fair amount of attention in the Pantera community too. People really responded to things that we did differently and with good taste while maintaining that beautiful, core Pantera look.

Over the past year I’ve taken it to shows. It gets a good amount of attention, but I’m just not really a show kind of guy. I’m ready to go after an hour. Don’t like being stuck there all day and don’t really get a lot out of guys walking by telling me it’s a nice Ferrari, Delorean or Maserati.

Then Roger Ebert dies. I read an article that he wrote, knowing death was near, where he was contemplating his life. He was happy with all the things that he’d accomplished and experienced. How would I fare? For me, owning a car is a valuable experience. More valuable than say, collecting them. You see where this is going right?

I have a huge list of cars that I’d like to own and I have no doubt that I’ll be able to own a lot of them sooner or later. But if my experience of owning the Pantera is now down to driving it to the occasional car show, maybe it’s time to move on. There are a lot of cool cars out there. A lot of great experiences to be had. I’d like to know what owning a Noble or an Audi R8 is like. Or what building a Factory Five ’33 Coupe is like. Or what having a dedicated race car to take to the track is like. These are the type of things that the Pantera can give me. All those years of hard work paid off.  :)

So yeah, last week I sold the Pantera. I thought I would feel shitty, but I am super excited. Excited for what is to come. What will replace the Pantera? What adventures await! The only problem now is committing to one choice and sending the others back to the “one day” list.

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Scoop!

I bought a old top fuel style fiberglass hood scoop. Wanted it to match the rest of the truck so I painted it up to look old and weathered and rusty. Turned out pretty cool!

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Driving

The truck is mostly finished. Have a few odds and ends left, but I’m driving it now on the weekends. Feels good to get it out of the garage. I get a lot of compliments on it. Lots of people taking photos, rolling down their windows to hear it, etc. Decided to take some decent photos of it today.

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Cool Isle of Man TT documentary

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Motor swap

The tired old 305 in the ’37 Ford makes funny noises at mid to high rpm’s. Thought maybe it was a lifter so I pulled the valve covers and discovered more sludge build-up than I’ve ever seen. You could scrape the stuff off in big chunks with a butter knife. I filled up a glass jar with the stuff, just from one valve cover. And it was down in the heads too, clogging oil return holes, the oil filter was pressurized when I pulled it off. Must have been clogged. Nasty stuff. That’s a good excuse for a motor swap right?

The new motor is a mild 350 from GM. I’m pretty excited because it’s the first crate motor I’ve bought. I didn’t want anything crazy in the truck. I just wanted something that I wouldn’t need to worry about when driving to car shows.

The swap went pretty smooth. Only trouble I ran into was with the electric fan. I bought a fan wiring kit from Summit and the circuit breaker was bad. The fan would run for a few minutes, then slow and turn off. Replaced that circuit breaker with another 30 AMP one I had and now everything is fine.

I welded the old valve covers on top of the new ones. Looks the part. Gotta do a little tuning now. Carbs and timing. Transmission swap is next. Pardon the crappy cell phone pictures. I find that I’m too lazy to take photos with a real camera these days. Take out the card, bring the photos into photoshop, crop, re-size, sharpen, upload.  :P

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Made in the USA

I’m buying a lot of parts these days and trying to buy US made whenever possible. To that end, I decided to keep a list of good manufacturers that build stuff here. Added a “Made in the USA” page to the blog.

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Awesome Pantera

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Man Cave

I spent most of the last four days in the garage. I’m so sore, and tired. Gonna feel worse tomorrow, but I am pleased. Four days in the garage is addictive. I want more.

This ’37 Ford was home built for the most part, which means if you want something like a new exhaust system, you can’t simply buy an exhaust kit from Summit. You’re going to have to build it. Furthermore, I had a few crazy ideas which would require building the whole set-up, including headers, from scratch. Challenge accepted.

One of the tools that I don’t have is a pipe bender, so I bought a whole lot of pipe in different diameters and different bends. You can get do-it-yourself kits like this for super cheap. Measure, cut, assemble, weld. Build it the way you want it.

I love the look of Lake Style headers but I wanted to hook up electronic cut outs instead of bolted block off plates. I also wanted the lower pipe to come out near a 45 degree angle, then go through the truck body, between the door and the frame,  through a high-flow catalytic converter (hey I can hot rod and love our planet too), muffler and then have the exhaust tip exit behind the door at about a 45 degree angle where the body starts to roll around to the back of the truck.

Flex tubes were added under the headers to make sure that no pipes get overly stressed.

The exhaust stuff was done on Saturday and Sunday. On Thursday and Friday I installed a new intake manifold and dual Holley carbs. More on that later.

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Seating for four

Finally installed the back seat in the Scout (seatbelts too). Yay!

I have also added a picture of the new windshield washer pump/bottle combo, and the electric fuel tank switch which replaced the old mechanical unit.

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Too much work for a PCV Valve

If you’re going to run Webers on a V8, you’ve got to figure out what to do about vacuum. Each carb barrel goes straight through the intake and into the cylinder head. There’s no common chamber on the intake, so there’s nowhere to plumb a vacuum line. On the Pantera, we installed an electric vacuum pump under the trunk (in the front of the car). That solves the vacuum needed for the brake booster, but it doesn’t solve the PCV Valve. I’ve gone without one until now.

So I bought some aluminum spacers off of ebay, some brass t-fittings from summit and vacuum line from PepBoys. Drilled and tapped the spacers. Took of the carbs, installed the spacers, PCV valve, etc. and whola!

I also installed shorter velocity stacks to account for the spacers and some better looking stainless filter screens (no filter, just metal screens to keep the big stuff out).

Yes, I could have drilled and tapped the intake manifold directly, but that’d require pulling the intake off and it would be a permanent change. I liked the idea of being able to pull the spacers if the car didn’t run well.

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